3. Josephus described cannibalism during the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE
Flavius Josephus’s The Wars of the Jews contains a passage graphically depicting cannibalism practiced by the Jews starving during the Siege of Jerusalem. In Book 6, Chapter 3, Section 4, a woman named Mary, daughter of Eleazar, describes the suffering and lack of food among the citizens of Jerusalem as being so severe that she could no longer find any sort of food, and “the famine pierced through her very bones and marrow”. The hunger drove her to do a “most unnatural thing”, and she took her son, who was, “a child sucking at her breast”, and exhorted him to “be thou my food”.
“As soon as she had said this, she slew her son, and then roasted him, and eat the one-half of him, and kept the other half by her concealed”. When the act was discovered by other Jews they were too horrified by her actions to punish her. The story of her murder and consumption of her son spread through the city, and Josephus reported that when the people heard the story they reacted, “as if this unheard of action had been done by themselves”. Josephus wrote that most of the people “distressed by the famine” wanted to die, considering those already dead to be happier than those still struggling to remain alive, reduced to such vile acts as those committed by Mary.